Less than 24 hours after the former president’s accident, pastors across the country addressed their stunned and fearful congregants during Sunday morning services. At a conservative evangelical church in Visalia, a farming community in California’s Central Valley, the pastor’s sermon carried a sobering message. Rev. Joel Renkema of Visalia Christian Reformed Church reminded his congregation that, in Christian teachings, trumpets herald judgment. He interpreted the accident involving Donald Trump as a similar warning—a “clear and obvious message to our country.”
Renkema urged his parishioners to reflect on the state of political discourse, which he said had spiraled out of control. “This is a warning shot!” he declared passionately. “Can we hear it? Will we listen?” His sermon was a call for an end to the hatred and demonization of political opponents.
By the time worshipers gathered nationwide, less than a day had passed since the suspected assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Church leaders were left with little time to help their shocked congregations process this violent and bloody moment in U.S. history.
Despite his often tenuous relationship with overt religiosity, Trump has become a messiah-like figure to many in the hard-right Christian community of the MAGA movement. For some, the attack on him was seen as an assault on Christianity itself. Amid the intense division in America, many church leaders used their Sunday sermons to issue urgent appeals for calm.
“As Americans, we all have to be horrified today at what took place not too far from here in Butler last evening,” said Rev. Kris Stubna during his Sunday remarks at St. Paul Cathedral, a Catholic parish in Pittsburgh.
The Trump campaign gave no indication that the former president attended church that Sunday. However, a close source described him as feeling almost “spiritual” about the near-assassination attempt, sensing that surviving the ordeal was a “gift from God.”
Given the diverse mosaic of Christian communities, the responses at the pulpit and in the pews varied widely, depending on location, denomination, and demographics. Some evangelical leaders made pointed references to “enemies” and “tests” of the faithful without directly mentioning Trump or the accident. Others, particularly those associated with the fast-growing Christian supremacist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, explicitly named Trump in their sermons and declared spiritual warfare against his opponents.
